SOMETIMES we get so embroiled in our own petty problems, we forget there’s a whole world out there where f—ked up things happen.
How else would you describe the shooting in El Paso, Texas on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2019, where some 20 people were confirmed killed and more than two dozen were injured?
The victims weren’t soldiers in a battlefield. They were ordinary people doing weekend shopping.
Fourteen of the casualties were “Americans.” The other six were Mexican nationals, identified by their country’s secretary of foreign affairs.
The suspect, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, apparently had a beef against the United States’ neighbor to the south. A four-page document believed to be written by him was posted online less than 20 minutes before authorities received calls about the incident.
According to American news network CNN, the document is “filled with white nationalist and racist hatred toward immigrants and Hispanics, blaming immigrants and first-generation Americans for taking away jobs and the blending of cultures in the United States.”
Quite ironic, really.
Maybe the history class offered in Crusius’ school conveniently omitted that part about Texas originally being Mexican territory after the Spaniards in the 1500s started settling the area, which, by the way, was already home to numerous Native American tribes. That Mexico, after winning its independence from Madrid in 1821, encouraged organized immigration from the US, which would explain why, in less than two decades, the Anglos had vastly outnumbered the Mexicans.
All he had to do was look around him. He was living in “El Paso.”
Then again, maybe he knew. And that is why he, and people like him, have become afraid. Deep down inside, they can’t deny the fact that they are the interlopers. That the Hispanics they hate so much rightfully belong there.
History does have a way of repeating itself.
Anglo immigration in the 1800s resulted in the displacement of the original Mexican and Native American settlers. But recent immigration from the south coupled with the local Hispanics’ high birth rate have slowly turned the tables against the Anglos. Now, Hispanics are poised to become the majority in US states that had been “annexed” by Washington almost 200 years ago.
Maybe that’s what he and others like him cannot accept. The inevitable is right around the corner.
So how is this relevant to us here in Cebu?
Like it or not, hatred exists. Either borne out of insecurity or ignorance. Even here in our archipelago, we tend to distrust people from other regions because of the way they talk. Or because of the religion they practice.